Gump Worsley looked a bit out of place in goal during his 21-year NHL career - until
they dropped the puck. Then, the roly-poly maskless man in the net was at his
nimble best. Worsley, who died Friday January at 77 after suffering a heart
attack the previous Monday, used his 5-foot-7, 180-pound frame to forge a Hall
of Fame career and help the Montreal Canadiens win four Stanley Cups in a five-year
span.

"It was just his body shape," former teammate Gilles Tremblay
said. "He was real quick in the net. He did his exercises. But some people
are tall and thin like Ted Harris and some are built like Worsley." Lorne John
Worsley, who got his nickname as a child because his hair stuck up like cartoon
character Andy Gump, won the Vezina Trophy as the NHL's top goalie in 1966 and
1968, when he was also a first-team All-Star.

He was among the select
few to play in net when the NHL had only six teams and teams carried only one,
maskless goaltender. He went head-to-head with greats such as Jacques Plante,
Terry Sawchuk, Glenn Hall and Johnny Bower.

Tremblay recalled a teammate
who always had a smile and a joke in the dressing room and who was "very
well liked all through the league. "He'd walk through the room past guys with
perfect builds and he'd say, `I've been in the league a lot of years with this
belly, so I hope you guys can do as well as I did.' He always made us laugh,"
Tremblay said.

What is less known about him was that he was also
a pretty good soccer player.

Canadian soccer historian Colin Jose said
that while playing hockey in the minor leagues for the Saskatoon Quakers in
the early 1950s, Worsley played soccer in the summer for the Saskatoon Legion.
He played for the Saskatchewan All-Stars against the touring Tottenham Hotspur
in 1952 and, when he moved home to Montreal the next year, reached the Canadian
championship soccer final with Montreal Hakoah.

But hockey was Worsley's
passion from his childhood in Montreal's Pointe St. Charles district. He
grew up in a family that worshipped the defunct Montreal Maroons and didn't like
the Canadiens. His favorite player was Rangers goalie Dave Kerr.

In
his teens, he signed with the junior Verdun Cyclones, who were owned by the Rangers
and, in those pre-draft days, became Rangers property.

He played
minor league hockey for the New York Rovers, the St. Paul Saints, Saskatoon
and the Edmonton Flyers before he was called up for the start of the 1952-53 NHL
season after goalie Charlie Rayner was injured. Worsley won the Calder Trophy
as the league's best rookie, only to be shocked when he was sent down to the
Vancouver Canucks of the Western Hockey League the next season when the Rangers
signed Bower. Worsley was back up with the Rangers in 1954-55 and played brilliantly
for nine more seasons on mostly weak New York teams.

Lounging
at home in the offseason in 1963, Worsley got a call from a friend to tell him
he had been traded to Montreal along with Leon Rochefort, Dave Balon and Len Ronson
for Plante, Phil Goyette and Don Marshall. He turned on the radio and heard
it himself. "To this day, the Rangers have never told me I was traded," Worsley
told the Hall of Fame.

He went from facing 40-50 shots a game in
New York to a team that was a perennial powerhouse, still with some of the players
from the team that won five straight Stanley Cups from 1956-1960. Injuries
caused him to spend most of the next two seasons with the Quebec Aces, but he
was called up in 1964-65 and helped Montreal win four Cups in a five-year span,
interrupted only by Toronto's last Stanley Cup triumph in 1967.

"With
the trade, he got his reward by playing for a very good team," said former goalie
Ken Dryden, who joined the Canadiens in 1971. "I played against him his last
couple of seasons in Minnesota. He still wasn't wearing a mask, which was unbelievable."
Worsley was sold to the expansion North Stars for cash in 1970 and
retired, but was talked into playing four more years in Minnesota. He wore a
mask only for the final six games before he retired in 1974 to his longtime home
in Beloeil. He then worked many years as a scout for the North Stars.

Worsley
retired with a career record of 335-352-150 with 43 shutouts. In the
playoffs, he was 40-26 with five shutouts. When he left the NHL, only one goalie,
Andy Brown of the Pittsburgh Penguins, was still not wearing a mask.